ABSTRACT
The Russian intelligentsia poses one of the most exasperating problems in the social history of Russia. It has continued to engage the unabated attention of Western and Russian authors alike and has equally challenged the imagination of many creative men of letters. Not only has the intelligentsia been the object of varied analyses ranging from scholarly studies to “musical” edifications,1 it has also been passionately attacked by many a detractor and no less passionately defended by many a partisan. So diverse and competing are these images of the Russian intelligentsia during the past century that their comprehensive review would require a separate study. It has been branded by some a “crazy class of semi-Europeans”2 and exalted by others as that “beautiful class” which lends “life, warmth and beauty to the whole organism of Russia, to all her elements and classes of society.”3 It has been likened to “oil with which all wheels of the Russian state and public life are lubricated”4 as well as compared to a “dung-hill” addicted to the parrot-like refrain on a syllogistic theme: “All Russian intelligenty are beautiful and great. I am the intelligent, consequently, I am beautiful and great.”5 Some authors, like those of Vekhi, likened the intelligentsia to a “leprous dog” and “afflicted crowd”6 estranged from the Russian people, whereas others, like Merezhkovsky, bemoaned as unfortunate the very fact that these alleged foreigners in their own land were “too much Russian, indeed, exclusively Russian.”7 Finally, the same intelligentsia has been credited by some with the creation of Russian representative culture, only to be diagnosed by others as “crippled souls” suffering from the chronic malaise of “intellectual paralysis.”
